Imagining death
Why we can’t imagine death:
People in every culture believe in an afterlife of some kind or, at the very least, are unsure about what happens to the mind at death. My psychological research has led me to believe that these irrational beliefs, rather than resulting from religion or serving to protect us from the terror of inexistence, are an inevitable by-product of self-consciousness. Because we have never experienced a lack of consciousness, we cannot imagine what it will feel like to be dead. In fact, it won’t feel like anything—and therein lies the problem.
The common view of death as a great mystery usually is brushed aside as an emotionally fueled desire to believe that death isn’t the end of the road. And indeed, a prominent school of research in social psychology called terror management theory contends that afterlife beliefs, as well as less obvious beliefs, behaviors and attitudes, exist to assuage what would otherwise be crippling anxiety about the ego’s inexistence.
…
Yet a small number of researchers, including me, are increasingly arguing that the evolution of self-consciousness has posed a different kind of problem altogether. This position holds that our ancestors suffered the unshakable illusion that their minds were immortal, and it’s this hiccup of gross irrationality that we have unmistakably inherited from them. Individual human beings, by virtue of their evolved cognitive architecture, had trouble conceptualizing their own psychological inexistence from the start.
Leave a Comment
Additional comments powered by BackType
Wow, great post. I have never heard anyone who could express this problem more clearly. When I try to imagine what it would be like to ‘be dead’, I only realise that I am unable to picture it. Instead, I come to think that it wouldn’t feel like anything at all because my self-consciousness would simply cease to exist. Both of those facts: inability to imagine life after death and realisation that my ego will not even exist any more when I’m dead can be difficult to embrace at times.
That post could have been titled “Why Melissa is extremely scared of death” – it pretty much sums up what’s been worrying me since I was old enough to realise I existed (about 8 I think). Somehow, knowing that when it happens there won’t even be a “me” to notice isn’t very reassuring.
Sorry for making everybody all morbid.
sometimes i think about it .. i think it could be like sleeping phase with no dreams.. you live but you dont know a thing about yourself:)